haha sorry RogueKraytDragon! I promise, this one is longer :)
JJ was sure they'd been walking for hours. The endless walking through this field was begining to hurt her feet.
"So Reid," She said, trying to distract herself from how annoyingly tedious this walk was getting, "What have you been doing here all this time?"
Reid was walking behind her. She was amazed, he looked healthy and tan, like he hadn't aged a day. While the rest of them had aged a decade in a year from their frantic searching. He looked confused for a second, then shrugged.
"I woke up here and fell asleep."
"You spent all this time asleep?" JJ asked incrediously, pausing a second to stare at him, search his face for sincerity. It was all she found.
"Yeah." Reid said, pulling ahead of her.
"For a whole year?" JJ shouted to catch up.
Reid stopped in his tracks at that. Had it really been a year?
"I... guess?" Reid took a wary step. The news was disorienting to him. How could it have been a whole year?
"You disapeared a year ago from Monday last week." JJ said, "We've been searching like mad ever since."
"Well, you found me." Reid shrugged, "Thats insane though. I remember our trip to the Circus like it was yesterday. Wasn't it yesterday?"
"No." JJ looked him in the eye, "The Circus of Dreams abducted you."
"Wouldn't I have remembered that?" Reid asked, hoping this hole in her story would save his sanity.
"Do you? What's the last thing you remember before waking up here?" JJ grabbed his arm as he thought, not wanting to lose time. The sooner they got out of here, the better.
"I was... in my apartment... and... JJ its a blur!" Reid cried in frustrastion, rubbing his forehead angrily.
JJ looked around. They needed out. Now.
Hotch was ready to take a leaf out of Morgans book and throw something at the wall... or maybe assualt a door. He'd see which one came first. Probably both.
They'd searched for two days now and JJ was as gone as Reid. There was no sign of her.
And Maleficiis was absolutely no help. When Prentiss had asked her about it she'd just laughed and giggled like a madwoman. Then she'd played dumb. But it was obvious she knew what was going on.
Morgan was in there now, growing angrier with every passing second.
"You know something! Anything! We'll even take a hint!" Morgan cried.
Lunch had been brought in; Mcdonalds Cheesburger combos.
Maleficiis sat stirring a fry through her yogurt parfait thoughtfully.
"Have you ever tried the fries dipped in yogurt? It's good." She said dreamily.
Morgan slammed his fist on the table! "Talk you senile old woman or I have you sent to the worst old folks home I can find!"
"Now, now Derek. There's no need for that." Maleficiis smiled.
"How do you know that?" Morgan asked.
"Pardon?"
"My name. My first name. How do you know it?" Morgan snarled.
"Oh well. Maybe I do have Spencer. He's told me so many things. Quite a sweet little boy if you ask me."
Morgan's stony expression emmited a growl.
"Or maybe I read the papers huh?"
"What else has he told you?" Morgan asked.
"That he finds Lyssa tragic."
"What?"
"The little girl lighting people on fire? He finds her tragic. I have to agree with the boy." Maleficiis ate the fry and selected another, stirring the yogurt. "Poor girl. Had quite the home now didn't she? Her parents couldn't keep track of her every second and well... boys will be boys." She smiled cruelly at the thought and ate the fry. Morgan felt his gag reflex activate before he had control of himself again.
"Must, as you children say, 'Suck', when your worst fear lives only a few caravans away huh?" Maleficiis giggled.
"Your sick." Morgan snarled.
"Or old. But who cares? Anyway, despite that little adventure of hers. She loses her favorite toy in the fire... not to mention everything else!" Maleficiis laughed outright, popping a handful of fries in her mouth.
"What's the girls name?" He had to find out, had to find out before he lost it.
"Lyssa. do you need a hearing aid? I said a couple fifty hundred times."
"Her full name. Alyssa? Elizabeth? What?"
"The former's your prize. Now go away, Im eating." Maleficiis shooed him out the door.
Derek got up to leave, but stopped when he was in the doorway.
"We will find them. And then were putting you were no one will ever be touched by you again."
"Then who will play with the little girl when she gets lonely. She's a special girl young man. One who needs a playmate."
"There are plenty where she's gonna go."
"But does she deserve that place Derek?"
Derek slammed the door, refusing to give an answer.
Rossi and Prentiss stepped into the musty room. Prentiss was sure this could work... or atleast she hoped.
"Are you sure about this?" asked the less sure Rossi.
"Yeah." Prentiss said, maintaining her front, "And it's free. The chicks an old school friend of mine." She barged into the room, going passed the hanging beads curtains and heading into the center room.
A crystal ball sat in the middle, ontop of a wire wicker table painted black. A green wire lawn chair sat beside it. A row of five black wood chairs with high backs and arm rests sat along a brick wall, a gold bar, like the ones you would find in a ballerina studio, seperated them from the rest of the room. The rest of the walls were covered in newspaper articles and photos of assorted tradgedies and missing people posters. Smiling three and five year olds hung next to articles on plane crashes and murder cases.
A doorway on the other side of the room was dark, but you could hear voices through it... like there was someone chanting beyond the open doorway.
"Ivona?" Prentiss called, seating herself and Rossi in one of the five chairs barred from the rest of the room.
"Woo as called?" Someone said in an exotic and incredibly thick accent. A young woman with a mane of frizzy black hair streaked with red and hot pink stepped through the doorway. Her skin was pale and her eyes, lips, and nails were caked in thick black makeup and polish. Her clothes were thick black material and the dress was ripped the farther you went down her legs. So by the time you reached mid-shin it was just ragged material. Fishnets layered her legs and arms and chunky silver and black bracelets crowded her wrists. multiple rings, each with a different symbol and-or gem set in each. Her chunky black high-heeled sandals carried her as she crossed the room, bowing to Rossi and wrapping Prentiss in a tight bear hug.
"You can drop the accent." Prenitss smiled.
"Fine." Ivona smiled, speaking in a regular voice, "you're here for that free reading right?"
Prentiss nodded and sat down, but Rossi stood up.
"Wait," he leaned on the bar, "how do I know your for real? Why the bar?"
"To keep me legit. You know those old tricks of my kind. Going through your bags while your eyes are closed, trying to get a clue on the next one were about to con. Well, this way its hard to argue what you've seen is real or not. So sit back, keep your eyes open, and watch." Ivona sat in the green wire chair and placed her hands to a chunky diamond heart necklace on her neck.
"What is she doing?" Rossi asked.
"Trying to feel for the spirit world. It helps her concentrate to hold that necklace. It's like her good luck charm." Prentiss said, digging through her bag for something. She came out with a pair of mismatched socks.
"Ivona?" Prentiss leaned over the bar, holding the pink and green socks out. "Sorry, but its kind of a hurried thing. We need to find him fast."
Ivona nodded and crossed the room to take the socks. Then she sat back down, holding the socks to her necklace.
"Spencer." Ivona called gently, "Spencer are you there?"
Ivona gasped and went stiff. Before her body relaxed and she let out a long sigh.
"I think I've made contact Em." Ivona said in between labored breathes, "but its hard to see. Somethings surrounding the soul."
"What?"
"I think... a real ghost."
"A real ghost?" Rossi asked skeptically.
"Spencer's not a ghost. If he was this would be alot easier. He's tethered to the earthly plain somehow, but thing thing Im fighting to get to him is a real gh- oh dear. Oh, that's so sad!" Ivona wiped a tear from her still closed eye, careful not to smudge her makeup.
"What?" the FBI agents asked together.
"Tell you in a second. I've made contact!" Ivona held the socks tighter and took a few labored breathes. "Spencer? Spencer can you answer me?"
It was deadly quiet for a second. Then Ivona opened an eye.
"He's asking who I am." She closed her eye again, "Spencer Im a friend of Prentiss'! They've asked me to help find you. Do you know where you are?"
She opened both eyes.
"He want's me to prove it."
"Ask him about the time he started taking diladid, ask if he remembers how he treated me." Prentiss said immeadiatly.
"Are you sure? Sometimes you say the wrong thing and they want to leave. I can't get him back if he doesn't wanna be found."
"Just do it."
Ivona shrugged and relayed the message. It was quiet for a few minutes. Then Ivona nodded and turned back to the FBI agents.
"He says he doesn't know where he is but JJ is there with him. He still shocked its been a year! He says he just woke up for the third time in what feels like minutes since he fell asleep."
Rossi and Prentiss looked at eachother, but looked back when Ivona shook her head.
"Spencer," She said in a commanding voice, "Tell us everything you know so we might locate you!"
Reid and JJ had stopped to sit while Reid talked to this "Ivona" person. Reid sat with his eyes closed, talking to, what looked like to JJ, nothing. He'd pause, then supply an answer.
"Okay." He said after a particularly long time. "It's really hard though since its kinda blurred around the time I left my apartment and when I got here."
Reid took a deep breath and started, "There's this little ghost girl in the mirror named Lyssa. She's the one in control although I see this old hag pass through where I am now and again talking to her."
"Lyssa shows up around here?" JJ asked. Reid nodded and kept going.
"They sometimes try to talk to me but I always run away. When I look back theyre not there anymore."
Reid heard a small whispering in his head, Ivona must be asking him something.
"What does the Hag look like?"
She's really old and her hands are gnawreled. She wears this black cloak and lets her gray hair straggle everywhere. She only smiles when Lyssa is around. Thats the only time she talks in a human voice to. The rest of the time she sounds like that pet vulture of hers."
JJ hugged her knees to her chest. This place was wrm and comfy and all, but thinking about the Witch made a cold shiver run down JJ's back.
"She caught me once, now that I think about it, and when she touched me it was like her skin burned me. She shrieked and disapeared into the ground only to pop up a hundred yards away and start screaming something."
JJ looked down at Reid's forearm now, there was a burn mark in the shape of a handprint.
"She's always creeping around me, and smiling when she gets closer. It's really creepy."
A shadow engulfed JJ, and a horrible, cracking voice slithered into her ears.
"Am I really so terrible?" Maleficiis asked, coming closer.
So... yeah. I spent alot of time writing this one. I guess i've made Rogue scream enough for a longer chapter :)